These Facial Features Matter Most to First Impressions

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You may think you can judge a person you just met based on his or
her facial expressions. Does a smile indicate a person is
easygoing or insincere? Does squinting show concentration, or
mistrust?

First impressions of people — such as whether they are
trustworthy, dominant or attractive — can develop from a glimpse
as brief as 100 milliseconds or less. Brain scans suggests that
such judgments are made automatically, probably outside of
people's conscious control.

But now, a computer system that mimics the human brain has
identified which facial features most influence how others first
perceive a person, scientists say.These findings could lead to
computer programs that automatically see which photographs would
help people give
the best first impressions they can, the researchers added.

Because first impressions can affect people's future behavior and
can be difficult to overturn, "it's useful to know how we're
being judged on our appearance, especially since these judgments
might not be accurate — think of effects on court cases or
democratic elections, for example," said study co-author Tom
Hartley, a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist at the
University of York in England. "Should we really trust a smiling
face?" [ Smile
Secrets: 5 Things Your Grin Reveals About You ]

Although some previous research has suggested that there may be a
kernel of truth in some first impressions, Hartley noted that
people typically go too far with the judgments they develop from
first impressions. "For instance, someone with a young-looking
face is judged to have other immature characteristics," Hartley
said. "Evidence is clear that often judging a book by its cover
is just plain wrong, but we all do it."

Given the increasing presence of faces on social media sites,
first impressions could be more important than ever, Hartley
suggested.

"Whereas, in the past, we got to know people through meeting them
in the flesh, increasingly, our first contact is online, and our
first impressions are based on the
images we provide on social media profiles," Hartley told
Live Science.

Previous research has shown that "the many different judgments
characterizing first impressions tend to fall along three
underlying dimensions," Hartley said. "One is approachability —
do they want to help me or to harm me? The next is dominance —
can they help or harm me? The last is youthful-attractiveness —
perhaps representing whether they would be a good romantic
partner or rival."

Judging images

To learn more about how first impressions are formed, the
research team at the University of York found 1,000 photographs
of people on the Internet, and showed them to six volunteers. The
participants rated their first impressions of the people in the
photos on social traits such as trustworthiness and dominance.
These images were typical of pictures seen every day, ranging
widely in angle, lighting, ages, expressions, hairstyles and so
on.

Each face was broken down into 65 physical features, such as the
shape of a person's jaw, mouth, eyes, cheekbones or eyebrows. The
researchers then analyzed these faces using an
artificial neural network, a kind of artificial intelligence
computing system that mimics
how the brain works. They had the neural network attempt to
learn which facial physical features might be linked to first
impressions of social traits.

This modelsuggested "that given enough data, we can accurately
gauge people's likely impressions of a given image," Hartley
said. "If you're thinking about attaching a picture to their CV,
résumé or online dating profile, maybe you should take a look at
our paper first!"

The model found that mouth shape and area were linked to
approachability — unsurprisingly, a smiling expression is a key
component of an impression of approachability. When it came to
youthful-attractiveness, eye shape and area were important, in
line with views
linking relatively large eyes to a youthful appearance.
Dominance was linked with features indicating a masculine face
shape, such as eyebrow height, cheekbones, as well as color and
texture differences that may relate to either masculinity or a
healthy or tanned overall appearance.

"Our results suggest that some of the features that are
associated with first impressions are linked to changeable
properties of the face or setting that are specific to a given
image," Hartley said. "So, things like expression, pose, camera
position, lighting can all, in principle, contribute alongside
the structure of our faces themselves. In some ways, our model
parallels or makes explicit the kinds of judgment that might be
relevant to casting directors, animators and portrait
photographers who select or manipulate images to create certain
impressions."

Wanna look more trustworthy?

By reversing this process, the researchers created a model that
generated cartoon faces depicting the typical characteristics of
someone judged as having certain social traits. The researchers
compared the results with those of 30 human judges, and found
that these cartoon faces usually gave the first impressions they
were designed to give. [ 7
Personality Traits You May Want to Change ]

Hartley suggested that future research might be able to use these
findings "to select an image which conveys a desirable
impression, perhaps even automatically."

However, Hartley noted that the researchers looked only at
Caucasian faces in this study, to avoid possible confounding
effects of race, though they are currently conducting
cross-cultural studies to find out how culture impacts the
results.

"We know that people process faces of other ethnicities
differently from their own — this might be because of cultural
stereotypes, but also more subtle things such as the level of
experience we have with different kinds of variation in the
face," Hartley said. "As it's not practical to incorporate faces
and judges from every possible geographic, cultural and ethnic
background, we instead try to keep these factors fixed by
focusing on one ethnic and cultural group at a time. We can then
investigate the ways in which different groups rely on
different facial features and perhaps reach different social
judgments in a step-by-step way."

In addition to looking across cultures, future studies can also
"use brain imaging to investigate how these social impressions
are created in the brain," Hartley said. Another direction for
research "will be to look at ways in which first impressions can
be influenced by directly manipulating specific features, and
whether, with the knowledge we now have, we can influence
people's social decisions by choosing images with particular
characteristics," he added.

The scientists detailed their findings online July 28 in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.